[KS] India and Hangeul

[RiHwasu]

The following two articles by Ki Joong Song would be worth to note for those who are interested in the relationship between  Korean and Indian and between Korean and 'Phags-pa writings.

 

"P'akpa('Phags-pa) muncha-wa Hunmin chong'um" 팍바('Phags-pa  八思巴)문자와 訓民正音, Kugo-hak 國語學 No.54 (2009.4.), Kugohakhoe 국어학회, Seoul.  pp.17-74. In Korean. 

 

"Ancient Indian and Chinese Models of Sound Classification and Their Reflections in the Writing Systems," Scripta, International Journal of Writings Systems (Seoul), Volume 3 (September 2011). pp.25-43. In English.

 

Hwasuri

    
 



From: werner_sasse at hotmail.com
To: koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:36:07 +0000
Subject: [KS] India and Hangeul





 



From: werner_sasse at hotmail.com
To: koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com
Subject: India and Hangeul
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 11:34:48 +0000




Hi, friends and colleagues,
 
In the discussion about a possible Sanskrit/India connection with Hangeul I want to stress a point which has been bothering me for some time. We should leave the design of the letters only a little room in the background, the foreground should be discussing the methodology behind the two inventions. And here I happen to see India--> China--> Korea. Not the shape of the letters: the methodology.
 
As the possible Sanskrit/India connection with Hangeul has come up I want to offer for discussion some paragraphs I have prepared for a book on a few aspects of Korean culture wich I hope to have in the press soon (it will be in Korean, but my draft I prepared in English)...
 
Here is an excerpt of my draft:
 
"       Indian phonology knew the distinction between consonants and vowels, and we find the same distinction in Hangeul, even emphasizing their different character by the fact that the formation and classification of the two sets of graphemes follows different philosophical principles.


           The great achievement of King Sejong was that he did not follow the Chinese two-way model but divided the rhyme further into vowel and end consonant. This may have been inspired by knowledge of the 'Phags-pa script, the Tibetan alphabetic script which had been used during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (c. 1260-1368), when Goryeo was under Mongolian rule. And the Mongolian Uyghur script also makes a distinction between initial consonant, vowel, and final consonant, but the initial and the final consonants have different forms. It is another one of the great inventions of King Sejong to realize that the two kinds of consonants, the initial and the end consonants of a syllable, are identical even if some of the initial sounds are neutralized in Korean and do not exist in syllable end position.

          In 'Phags-pa the vowels are individual letters which can traditionally be written without initial consonant, but the vowel [a], diphthongs, and the semivowel were written following a zero-sign, similar to vowels in Hangeul following the zero consonant [ㅇ].

           Another similarity between 'Phags-pa and Hangeul is the convention to combine vowels and consonants to write syllables. Also, in both orthographies the white space between words in a text was of the same size as the white space between syllables within a word, just like the flow of sounds in spoken language. The concept of separating one word from the other was not part of the writing conventions, and so in both orthographies the end of one line could cut through a word (like also Hanmun) 

           Originally Hangeul was a strictly phonetic script, writing the syllables as they were spoken, not the underlying 형태소, like originally 바라미 and not like today 바람이. This is also like in 'Phags-pa, cf. the Mongolian word usun “water”, which is written in 'Phags-pa in two syllables u sun, but the three syllable genitive form is written u su nu.

           The creation of the consonant symbols is explained in the 訓民正音解例 as the based on schematic drawings of the human speech organs as they articulate certain sounds, namely 아(牙)·설(舌)·순(脣)·치(齒)·후(喉)음. The idea to use the point of articulation to classify consonants also goes back to Indian phonology, which was adopted by Chinese scholarship, and then applied by King Sejong to the analysis of Korean. Of course the Indian and the Chinese systems of articulation points are only partially identical with the Korean one, since the languages are different, but the principle to use the point of articulation to classify came from India via China. But then, King Sejong’s idea to use the articulation not only as a tool to classify, but actually base the design of the consonants on an abstract drawing of the manner of articulation is brilliant and one of the aspects which make Hangeul so outstanding among the alphabets of the world.

           Equally brilliant is King Sejong’s idea to systematically apply a simple additional stroke to the basic consonant letters to mark 유기음(有氣音).  However, not only 유기음 like ㄱàㅋ was designed by one additional stroke, also other kinds of “more effort” were marked with one additional stroke, like ㄴà ㄷ, ㅅàㅈ. One could wonder, why the different phonetic features 파렬음(破裂音)/폐쇄음(閉鎖音), 접근음(接近音), and 유기음 were all designed by the same marker, that is, one additional stroke. The reason, however, seems to lie in the basic idea of “more effort”, which in the 訓民正音解例 is called 厲(려) “엄할厲, 힘쓸厲. This again goes back to Indian phonology, which had discovered a class of features called “Effort of articulation (Uccāraṇa Prayatna)”, in which were two subclasses. The first was called : “External effort (Bāhya Prayatna)”, grouping 파렬음(破裂音), 접근음(接近音), and 마찰음(摩擦音), and the second was called “Internal effort (Abhyantara Prayatna)”: with the subclasses of 무기음 (無氣音), 유기음(有氣音), 무성음 (無聲音), and 유성음(有聲音). All these “Efforts of articulation” were seen by King Sejong just like in the Indian phonology as one and the same kind of phonetic feature, which he explained as “厲”, and were marked by the same genial design feature, one simple additional stroke….

           ...I want to add just one last remark which shows that the authors were very much aware of the India à China à Korea connection in phonological research. 정인지(鄭麟趾) in his 序 to the 훈민정음해례 wrote “雖風聲鶴唳鷄鳴狗吠 皆可得而書矣 (바람소리, 학의 울음소리, 닭 우는 소리, 개 짖는 소리일지라도 모두 이 글자를 가지고 적을 수가 있다). The first part of this sentence is actually a direct quote with a minor rearrangement from the preface of the Qiyin lüe (七音略, kor. 칠음략), a rhyme table by Zheng Qiao (鄭樵, early 12th century), where it reads 雖鶴唳風聲鷄鳴狗吠. In this preface Zheng Qiao highly praised the deep phonological knowledge of Buddhist monks, and it is obvious that 정인지 quoted this sentence not as a sudden poetic twist in his 序 but as an only slightly hidden hint pointing to the tradition of Indian phonology transmitted by Buddhist monks. "
 
This much, let's see a discussion...
 
Best,
Werner Sasse

 
 		 	   		  
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